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Sun, 15 Sep 2019 02:48:05 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.24The Social Lives of Group Chatshttps://salient.org.nz/2019/09/the-social-lives-of-group-chats/
https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/the-social-lives-of-group-chats/#commentsSun, 15 Sep 2019 02:48:05 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=52496Three of my friends’ phones dinged in concert. They picked them up and stared at the screens. I looked at the nearest friend, askance.

“It’s just the group chat,” he told me. Addled, I leaned over to look at his screen. “Depressing Memes for Suffering Single Teens,” it read. Memes about communism, mental health, faith. A meme every minute.

I was drunk enough to ask outright. “I’m single. I’m suffering,” I said, although only one of these things was true. “Can I be in the group chat?”

“Can I add Shanti to the group chat?” the nearest of the friends asked. Three glances; an assent, and my phone was chiming too.

The next morning, I scrolled back in the group chat. There were about ten members. I knew these people, but it was almost summer, and I hadn’t quite figured out their strands of connection’ how they wove around each other when I wasn’t there. It was the kind of relationship—the kind of close-knit group—where I felt privileged to be included, not remotely upset about not being added in the first place.

I saw which members sent which sorts of memes, when they were awake, who reacted, who was always online, who knew others well enough to change their nicknames. I started to figure out the lingo of the group chat; I started to send memes of my own.

Summer began. We were hundreds of kilometres apart. The chat grew more fraught. It was distracting—the constant buzzing—when I was trying to catch up with other friends and see my family, so I muted it, only perusing it when I was free.

The group chat plays a largely unheralded role in my social life. It is useful for organising events, sharing photos, and telling my flatmates to please sort out the dishes, please, it has been three days of this. Yet it is host to its own species of conversations and peculiar social dynamics.

I asked Kathleen Kuehn, a Media Studies senior lecturer specialising in social and digital media, about group chats, in the hopes that she could give me some language to articulate their nature. Kathleen studies the sociological aspects of media, in terms of interpersonal relationships and power dynamics.

I told Kathleen about my experience with the meme group chat, the sense that an entire ecosystem of friends was crystallised in my screen. “There’s no archive of live conversation,” she pointed out, noting that this is one of the chief axes of differentiation between group chats and in-person conversation. “So, online, you can do your own mini textual analysis of what you’re seeing, and start making connections that you might miss in the moment.”

Brianna Nichol, 20, is a University of Otago student who has developed a reputation among her friends for constant involvement in group chats. “I’m big on reacts,” she tells me. “As the reacts come in, I’ll check on them and I’ll see who’s seen it and what time they’ve seen it.” This is certainly voyeuristic, but is it any more so than observing body language in a group conversation?

In New Zealand, at least anecdotally, the biggest platform for group chats is Messenger, owned by Facebook. Internationally, WhatsApp is more popular (also owned by Facebook). By conducting our conversations on Facebook, we are giving one of the world’s most powerful corporations nuanced data about our social lives; Facebook has confirmed that it monitors content on Messenger.

“Facebook is really good at capitalising on its network effect,” Kuehn says. The ‘network effect’ refers to business models where the product is more desirable when it has more users (as opposed to operating strictly on supply/demand). As I message someone I’m interviewing next week, send someone else my bank account details, and commiserate with my flatmates about the dishes problem—my attention and time are being directed into Facebook’s system—and I can’t help but agree. I need Messenger to make my life work, even if I’m uncomfortable with Facebook’s relentless appropriation of data.

As Bri suggests, much of the meaning contained in group chats goes beyond the text, and is held in polls, nicknames, and reactions. Kuehn calls these features ‘affordances’. “[Non-text features] afford or enable [Facebook] users to not just talk, but to create social events to create a sense of community. It’s like an elevated form of socialising where you’re performing multiple roles.”

I asked Bri how many active group chats she is in. She scrolled through her phone, counting: 14 active group chats and more that she has made for events or photos or meet-ups, and not kept up with. As we talked, her eyes sparkled with fervour. “I’m addicted to Messenger in general… I get very distracted by Messenger, which is fun, and I love it.” Her phone kept dinging with more messages, more distractions.

She sent a message to a group chat earlier, an in-joke with her friends about a blind date, and I watch her analyse the response. “I’ve made everyone’s day and I can see the reactions, Tania [name changed] didn’t react, but she’s seen it, why did she not react? She called me like ten times last night…” It takes a moment for her attention to return to the interview.

The nickname feature is also frequently used. “It’s easy to make fun of [people] using it. In one [group chat] I’m “edgy teen” because I listen to Billie Eilish,” says Éimhín O’Shea, 19, a barista. He doesn’t customise memes or group colours because he “doesn’t really care,” and tends not to create events as “you can just put it on Facebook” where it’s open to everyone.

There are several layers to group chats: Firstly, the convenience for organising logistical things. For some people, it doesn’t go beyond this. “Group chats are just for organising shit [otherwise] it’s easier to one-on-one message,” says Caitlin, a BCom/LLB student. Zeina Ibrahim, an International Relations and Media Studies student, says that she mostly creates group chats because “I can’t be bothered to message people separately.”

For others, it’s a manifestation of their relationships. “I’ve got my work friends, my flatmates, people from [last year’s hostel]. It’s a tangible way of seeing friendships in different groups,” says Éimhín. Bri notices that “there’s different levels of group chats as well, one group chat just has real close friends. Then there’s wider friends and then even wider.”

Clearly, not all group chats are made equal. As Bri and Éimhín talk, group chats unfold as Venn diagrams, loops of friends and flatmates and sometimes total strangers, building something together. Kuehn calls this ‘context collapse’. “In what world would you have your parents, grandparents, your best friends, the random kid you met as a first-year then forgot about… right on the same space?”

Kuehn is keen to emphasise that, at least for media studies scholars, “the digital world is part of the real world… it’s all still part of your embodied lived experience.” Group chats, for the most part, spill between reality and pale glass screens. Events organised on a group chat become real. Conversations begun in-person are supplemented by articles on the group chat.

In some ways, group chats are fundamentally the same as talking face-to-face: words are exchanged and responded to. People are remarkable at adapting to new means of communication, from telegraphs to walkie-talkies, to the internet—but for the most part, people say the same things to each other. Letters, for instance, can contain archives of entire relationships, and it was not uncommon in the past to copy out pieces of other people’s letters into private correspondence to share news, just as we might forward or screenshot messages today. Tapped-out, abbreviated telegraph messages carried just as much potential for misunderstanding as tapped-out, abbreviated Facebook messages, both devoid of the context of vocal inflections and facial expressions. Group chats are just a more recent iteration of how people have always communicated in groups.

In a group chat “you’re willing to say stuff you wouldn’t in real life,” Bri says, because there is less immediate feedback of how what you say is recieved. Sometimes this is good, because what Bri calls “strong” conversations need to be hashed out between friends.

“In a [face-to-face] conversation we try not to talk over one another [as] that’s considered impolite, and you need to hear what the person is saying,” Kuehn notes wryly. In a group chat, everyone can talk at once.

“In person, you can keep up with people… online, several people [can] message at the same time,” Zeina says. Tsunamis of notifications mean she keeps most of her group chats muted, as do Caitlin, Éimhín, and I. “[Group chats] are like trying to catch up with a race, trying to understand what everyone has to say and not answering questions,” Bri says. “Sometimes I do turn [notifications] off but not often at all, as usually I’m the one making all the notifications.”

Group chats are different from private messages, just as one-on-one conversations are different to conversations with big groups of people. “Like being in big groups of people [in person], I feel less confident to speak out, compared to when I’m messaging a group of close friends,” Éimhín says.

As in all social groups, there are rules and norms in group chats, which are usually unspoken (compared to, say, Facebook groups, which often have guidelines). To ask about the rules is to risk exposure as an outsider. In one group chat I’m in, someone asked “What’s the nickname policy?” when several others had received new monikers. Swiftly—brutally—I christened him Nickname Policy. I could easily have asked the same question: I too, would like to be known well enough by the people in that group chat to have earned a nickname. Simply to acknowledge this, that I have noticed the rules of the group chat, feels intimate—like by acknowledging my role in a social order, I will cement it.

In a group chat, you also have to discern what to say to everyone and what to say privately. In my flat group chat, for instance, I have to determine when to ask someone in private, to do the dishes (please! I love you! I hate plates!), and when to @ them in the group chat.

As for my memes group chat, it met its demise. Slowly, as the new term started and people disappeared into different flats and classes and work, the memes petered out. I could see it happening and I mourned it. I sent one last effort at revival on March 19, more than ten days after the previous message. No one reacted to the message, and I am left forever with a line of profile picture bubbles telling me that I had been seen and ignored; a long ellipsis, a shelf added to the archive of my digital life.

I worry that the people from that group chat left to form another one without me, but I don’t want to ask. Group chats are hidden and private. I’m only actively friends with a few of those people now.

In the group chat, everyone was my friend. Beyond the relationships I’ve kept up, my social orbit still intersects with the others, and out of my screen they look more like acquaintances. I wonder, in a moment of eye contact, what the emoji reaction to the presence of Shanti would be, if I were contained in smooth glass and not three messy dimensions. Press, hold down; do I merit a reaction any more interesting than a passive thumbs-up? But I’m trying to worry less about how other people respond to me, and group chats don’t help. So I smile—genuine, if wry—and walk on.

]]>https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/the-social-lives-of-group-chats/feed/0We Don’t Do Vegetableshttps://salient.org.nz/2019/09/we-dont-do-vegetables/
https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/we-dont-do-vegetables/#commentsSun, 15 Sep 2019 02:46:05 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=52494An issue on the status quo. We wanted to focus on the idea that the current state of things are to be maintained. What has been, will always be. Default is much the same. The grey, the emotionless smile, the pre-existing Player 1 logic.

Usually, these editorials throw shots at Massey or Critic, but this week, I’ll be real with you. When I started here, Salient’s status quo was a middle-to-upper class elitist liberal group that liked to scream into the pages at people who didn’t exist. It was cold in this office, and you could tell that through the pages. You had to be a part of the status quo to even get onto the cold pages.I hated every aspect of it, because I couldn’t change it.

Forget the regular narrative you’ve heard from this magazine. Before you challenge the status quo, understand it. Getting angry at something you don’t understand is as good as leaving a one-star Google review of Martinborough when all you did was stay in a motel and got goon drunk.

The VUWSA elections were two weeks ago. I’ll be honest, these editorials aren’t often on VUWSA, because they don’t need the extra space. Nothing they ever did throughout my time at university really affected my wellbeing, but maybe I didn’t try to get out enough.The candidates at the forum confused me. Some of them got on stage and lied about who they spoke to in confirming their policies. Some of them called out VUWSA for being inactive on issues they were, in fact, active on. Claiming they were going to start initiatives VUWSA had already been doing, albeit poorly. If they in fact wrote their own blurbs/speeches, I wouldn’t even let them write the obituaries next week.

I’d be worried if I cared about the future of VUWSA, but I don’t. I don’t carry a 26K deficit, so I don’t need to feel it. In true slavemaster fashion, Salient will feel every dollar of that deficit, as if it were our fault. I’m not angry at these candidates though, because this is a space I’ve never occupied and will never fully understand. I can’t be mad at the sustainability group at the fact they want a themed issue to guest-edit. You can let them know that if they’d had their shit together in Week 5, they could have worked on the Environment issue.

Much like myself in second-year, and much like your VUWSA candidates for 2020, we encourage you to understand the status quo. Whatever it may be—don’t automatically get angry at it. Pay attention to the spaces you want to change, and study its inner workings.

And don’t DM me on Friday night scared I might write an editorial about you. My designer would never let me waste the paper.

]]>https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/we-dont-do-vegetables/feed/0Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Menhttps://salient.org.nz/2019/09/invisible-women-exposing-data-bias-in-a-world-designed-for-men/
https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/invisible-women-exposing-data-bias-in-a-world-designed-for-men/#commentsSun, 15 Sep 2019 02:40:17 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=52492Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez is a book about, well, data bias in a world designed for men.

The main thesis of this book is that a lot of assumptions we make about people as a whole are only accurate when it comes to men, because men are seen as the default for all human beings. These assumptions are enforced by the “data gap”—a term Criado Perez uses to refer to a gap in our knowledge about women and their needs. The book discusses how this data gap affects women and society as a whole—in everything from bathroom queues, to city design, to medicine.

Criado Perez notes that these assumptions aren’t necessarily conscious ones—which makes highlighting the data gap even more important in challenging these assumptions.

The book is well-written, and easy to read. It covers many areas of expertise, from city planning, to software, to medicine, and explains how the data gap affects these fields. Criado Perez provides ample statistics and references, with good use of anecdotes to help the reader understand what the consequences of this data gap can look like.

One of the early examples in the book is how cities are often designed around car use and work commutes—failing to account for the different transport needs of women, who are more likely to use public transport, and more likely to make many small interconnected trips rather than twice-daily commutes to and from work.

Throughout the book, it’s discussed how “one size fits all” usually means “One-Size-Fits-Men”. Examples range from phone screens being too big for most women’s hands, to voice recognition software not working properly with women’s voices, to tools designed for male hands that reduce women’s ability to work.

I’ve had many conversations with female friends about them not being taken seriously by doctors, and about how useless some painkillers have been for them. Part IV: “Going to the Doctor” backs those conversations up with evidence—highlighting how many drug trials do not include women (meaning drugs may have differing effects on women, or none at all), and how assumptions based on how men’s bodies work contribute to doctors failing to correctly diagnose—or to outright dismiss—women’s health issues.

The book isn’t all doom and gloom, however. Criado Perez provides many examples of when the data gap is taken into consideration to positive effect—from getting pregnancy parking put in at Google, to developing cleaner-burning (and therefore safer) stoves for use in developing countries. She highlights initiatives like the UN-backed organisation Data2X, whose mission is to “improve the quality, availability, and use of gender data in order to make a practical difference in the lives of women and girls worldwide”.

I think getting this book into as many hands as possible would make a positive difference. While I already agreed with the author that gender inequality is an issue (wow what a hot take), reading Invisible Women gave me an insight into, and made me aware of, experiences I could never have myself. It got me thinking about solutions, and made me re-examine my own views with a more critical and better-informed eye.

Writing this review, I’m worried that I may not be doing the book and its themes justice, as I can’t possibly cover all its points in a 600-word review. Not only is it interesting—it’s important.

I’d recommend it to anyone, but especially to anyone who makes decisions that affect other people.

]]>https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/invisible-women-exposing-data-bias-in-a-world-designed-for-men/feed/0Audit – Law Revuehttps://salient.org.nz/2019/09/audit-law-revue/
https://salient.org.nz/2019/09/audit-law-revue/#commentsSun, 15 Sep 2019 02:38:12 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=52490I went to the Law Revue on Friday night, and what I witnessed felt like a slap in the face. My least favourite part was when two white girls, dressed in kimonos, shuffled and bowed their way onto the stage, and then attempted to speak Japanese—right after they said they needed help from ALSA (the Asian Law Students’ Association) because”‘everyone in ALSA speaks Chinese”.

Law Revue is an annual show put on by law students, poking fun at the law school in general. It’s satire, it’s un-PC, it’s supposed to be slightly controversial. What it’s not supposed to do is make fun of minority groups to the point where audience members (and I’m talking quite a few people here) feel othered and marginalised. People aren’t supposed to watch comedy shows and wind up crying and messaging people about why racism sucks.

As ‘woke’ as Wellington pretends to be, people do not and cannot understand racism unless they’ve experienced it. Getting genuine laughter for racist jokes isn’t proof that we’ve ‘made it’ as a society. Nor is putting three Asian people on stage during the skits proof that all Asians are okay with what’s being said. The jokes might have been funny if they were written and made by the Asians onstage, but they weren’t.

You can’t hide behind an anti-climactic moment where your character realises that she is racist and then proceeds to do nothing about it, and still have them be likable. That’s exactly the problem—plenty of likable people are racist, and because they’re likable and otherwise ‘woke,’ nobody is allowed to get offended. But fighting racism isn’t about being PC or woke, it’s a moral imperative to allow all people to live without fear.

The subtle racism that perpetuates our daily lives cannot be the core of your jokes.

At the end of the show, the cast gave us a ‘Don’t like it? Don’t watch it, it’s a law revue, what do you expect?’-type overview song. Like, hey, this is all a joke, you can’t be offended. I felt sick about the whole thing. I felt like I didn’t have a right to be upset because “it was just a joke”. I felt alone and alienated.

It’s a shame, because I genuinely did appreciate many aspects of the show. I was really impressed by the talented and well-rehearsed cast; some of the jokes were truly clever. But that doesn’t mean I was prepared to overlook the problematic parts of the plot, the fact that racism was once again exploited for an easy gasp-laugh. It’s 2019. It’s past time to learn some new humour.

It’s true, this wasn’t like University of Canterbury’s Lawsoc revue which prompted walk-outs. Most people loved this show, found it really funny. I appreciate that the majority of the white audience were probably fine with how the show went down. And even some Asians might have brushed the whole thing off. That’s not really the point though.

Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Furthermore, if you’re white, and you didn’t see the racism—maybe there’s a reason.The fact that I’m even afraid to speak up, afraid to be an ‘angry POC’, is part of the problem. We want to seem cool, not draw attention to our differences—even though the jokes do.

But the truth is, a comedy show shouldn’t have made us feel othered. I’m disappointed. I didn’t expect to be hurt by Wellington law students. They’re the supposed pillars of society.

Many following Salient will know of the series of articles written on the substandard quality of food within Victoria University’s halls of residence, especially Katharine Jermyn hall.

Compass Group is one of the largest food catering companies in the world, with their New Zealand branch being no exception. Along with catering the VUW halls, Compass also caters for other places around the country, such as Dunedin Hospital.

The contract that Compass has with Dunedin Hospital is longstanding, however, that hasn’t stopped numerous complaints from both staff and patients from creating a turbulent relationship with the caterers.

Not only this, Compass International has a suspension from the United Nations, after one of their board members (a Russian UN official) was arrested for wire fraud and money laundering, as well as bribing other officials in order to secure a contract to cater water and rations to UN peacekeepers.

Despite this, VUW recently renewed their contract with Compass to cater its halls.

Salient was able to sit down with Rainsforth Dix, Director of Student and Campus Living, to further discuss this issue.

“We’ve been engaging the campus on a daily basis, from time to time, and certainly a weekly basis, and been across the board. We meet regularly with them anyway,” stated Dix.

“Aside from that, we’ve been engaging with them quite strongly.”

After being shown photos of some of the poorer quality food served at KJ, Dix commented that if she was presented with that food, that she would be unhappy with it and that she would “certainly go and complain about it”.

“We’ve had many conversations since this came to our attention, and what we do know is that they had a change of staffing in Katharine Jermyn Hall at the beginning of this year,” Dix explained.

She continued to say that “We did ask them to address that issue, and they have addressed that issue. We’ve also asked them to address the consistency and quality of food that they’ve offered.”

A 2019 article released by Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center showed that students facing ‘food insecurity’ were more likely to have “lower grades and poorer health”.

This, coupled with the already acute stress of academic life, may have a detrimental impact on students’ wellbeing and academic success.

Salient met with Simon Lipscombe, Managing Director of Compass Group NZ, to talk about the issues and complaints.

When asked what quality of food he would expect if paying the same amount as a halls resident, Lipscombe remarked that “If you’re spending a lot of money on food you should expect a high degree of quality and service, which is what we aim to do.”

After being shown the same photos of food (a raw pork meatball, a salt-encrusted piece of tofu, and a pork chop with a tendon still attached) Lipscombe commented that “we serve 15 million meals a year in New Zealand. Every one of them is our mission to make sure they’re the absolute best for our customers.”

These same customers have been previously served mouldy dessert and maggot-filled meals.

Compass says that they strive to ensure good quality meals through systems such as an app for monitoring and reporting on food quality, yet slip-ups like the ones seen in KJ still occur frequently.

Given Compass International’s past transgressions, Lipscombe was asked if he thought that the company (and the New Zealand branch) had learned from their mistakes.

“I’m vaguely aware of those [mistakes] but I think Compass Group is very proud of being a market leader like I am in New Zealand. When you’re a market leader, you know, the expectation on you to perform and deliver, as you pointed out, is at a much higher standard.”

The specific changes made by Compass within the halls include precautions such as hiring new managers and chefs, implementing new quality control procedures such as additional reviews of all food served, and re-training of all staff.

Talking to VUW and Compass, both were adamant that they received more positive feedback than negative.

When asked to provide evidence of this, Compass gave Salient an infographic highlighting the number of positive comments received against negative comments.

The only evidence VUW provided was referencing the previous information given by Compass Group, and stating that they did not keep a record of comments regarding hall food. However, they commented that “we receive a lot of positive comments on the food but they are anecdotal”.

Many of VUW halls have student-made instagram accounts dedicated to, amongst other things, recording poor quality meals served by Compass.

VUWSA has responded to Salient on the long-standing issues regarding hall food, stating that “it is now a waiting game”.

They say it is time to see whether enough changes and improvements have been made to provide students with the value they deserve, and back up their own comments of reassurance.

“We would hope that the university from here on out would supply students in halls not only a meal that they themselves would be happy to eat, but is reflective of the money they pay.”

Though both parents and students have urged the university to make a drastic change, there are no plans to source catering to a different company for the foreseeable future.

Quotes and anecdotes collected by Salient, as well as the numerous hall food Instagram pages, indicate that this issue is one of deep concern for the quality of food being served to the residents at VUW halls.

“You’re paying that kind of money and you do expect that, because of that, you wouldn’t need to question your food,” commented one KJ resident.

Commenting on a particular broccoli meal on @kathyjcuisine, another resident stated that “they somehow manage to be simultaneously soggy and raw, they must work really hard to achieve that. It’s a KJ special.”

While many systems and plans are said to have been put in place, actual change is yet to be reported.

VUW PhD student, Gloria Fraser, recently developed a set of leading queer mental health resources after three years of research.

Fraser (Ngāi Tahu) developed the resources as part of her PhD research on queer experiences in the mental health sector. Available in both English and te reo Māori, the resources look to help those in the mental health industry better support members of the queer community.

Salient spoke to Fraser to find out more.

The three-year process has its roots in Fraser’s involvement with feminist organisations during her undergrad at the University of Auckland, seeing her queer friends experience mental health services.

The process was made up of three parts: interviewing members of the queer community, creating and undertaking a survey, and then making the resource itself. The survey saw 1600 people respond, “which was great.”

Fraser was quick to acknowledge the support of queer organisations in collaborating and consulting on the resource—especially as she’s not part of the community herself, and given the complexity and diversity of communities within the umbrella term of ‘queer’.

Because of this, she pointed out that one of the main challenges was cutting the booklet down to a mere 54 pages. “It could have been as long as a textbook.”

Part of her research involved a thematic analysis of queer experiences to mental health services. It was found that structural barriers, like long wait times and referral rejections, are a big issue for queer access.

Figuring out how to describe or present their identities to specialists is also a big issue, as is professionals then either over-focussing on those identities, or ignoring them altogether.

The consequences of these barriers can be significant for the community itself. “A lot of the time, the responsibility for this care falls back onto their community. So people in remote communities end up supporting each other a lot [which] puts stress on people who are already under a lot of stress.”

Another problem is that the role of mental health professionals in gender-affirming healthcare is unclear in New Zealand.

“People end up feeling like they have to prove their gender, prove they’re really trans, trans enough… They’re telling the story they think they need to tell, rather than sharing what they need and then getting what they need,” says Fraser.

However, when it comes to queer access in Wellington, Fraser says that while “we’re known as probably one of the most queer-friendly places in New Zealand […] that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a long way to go.”

Finally, Fraser’s advice to those doing their own research?

Other than “cat memes and baking,” she says, “you need to immerse yourself in the communities you’re working with as soon as possible. Don’t put it off.” Acknowledge the time it’s going to take, especially for building up relationships and trust.

With the full run of hard copies already sent out around the country, you can access Fraser’s resources online (for free) through organisations such as InsideOUT and RainbowYOUTH, as well as on the resource’s own website: http://rainbowmentalhealth.nz/

Victoria University seeks to construct ‘the living pā’ on its Kelburn campus, through redeveloping the space between 42 Kelburn Parade and 50 Kelburn Parade.

It draws on the seven petals of the US architectural framework ‘living building challenge’, which are: place, water, energy, health and happiness, materials, equity, and beauty.

The space will act as both an environmentally conscious building as well a culturally immersive space for students and staff of the university, including the Māori community.

Rhonda Thomson, one of the project’s Senior Leadership Team members, discussed the importance of ‘the living pā’ being not necessarily an entirely different building, but instead a way in which to “build on the foundation, the legacy of the wharenui”. This wharenui being Te Herenga Waka—which translates to ‘the hitching post for canoes’ and was constructed at 46 Kelburn Parade over thirty years ago by alumni and whānau of the university and wider Wellington.

Rhonda also mentioned the significance of ‘the living pā’ being a space to preserve and nourish Māori culture and the intricate connections that are valued.

“Māori are facing a critical horizon to keep on being Māori. We know that actually another word for being Māori is to be tangata whenua—so what does it mean to be tangata whenua? Well, it’s got to be about your relationship with the whenua.”

The challenge supports and promotes the establishment of ‘biophilic’ buildings which, in essence, involve an attentive focus on nature and its impact upon a space and the people withinit.

The development site currently is the base for the Māori studies department, Te Kawa a Māui, as well as the Māori students’ association, Ngāi Tauira.

The three project visions for the living pā include: He pā mataora–a thriving community, he pā kaiao–a living lab, and he pā anamata–a bright future.

Having the combination of culture with the focus of sustainability means that the building will embody an essentially indigenous interpretation of space and community.

The living pā will consist of three levels; the bottom tier being an open communal space for various kaupapa and activities, the centre tier being a learning and interactive area for tauira, and the top tier being for academic staff members—including the department of Te Kawa a Māui and head Māori leadership offices.

The process towards developing the building is currently in its second stage, focusing on the architectural preparation.

Collaboration have been initiated between various departments, consultants, stakeholders—and furthermore, the student body— since November 2017.

Organised hui and workshops have been of particular importance, in an effort to ensure decision making was inclusive, open, and thorough.

“We want to build more than a building. We want a building that talks to our values and tikanga, that matches identity and place.”